Scream Kings 2019, Day 11: Oliver Reed

Our scream king du nuit is the impeccable Oliver Reed! Oliver starred in the only Hammer werewolf film, "The Curse of the Werewolf" (Terence Fisher, 1961), as Leon, a young man doomed to transformation who can only be killed by someone who loves him. His next horror role came in "These Are the Damned" (Joseph Losey, 1962) as King, the thuggish brother of a young woman caught up in a radioactive nightmare. Then in another Hammer thriller, he plays Simon Ashby in the secret identity whodunit "Paranoiac" (Freddie Francis, 1963). In "The Shuttered Room" (David Greene, 1967), he once again is a rough outsider providing another threat to someone in supernatural peril, as the delinquent nephew of a woman investigating a haunted house. He takes a less sinister but still conflicted turn as Urbain Grandier in the religious horror thriller "The Devils" (Ken Russell, 1971). His next horror role was one that became iconic, as father Ben Rolf in a pre-"The Shining" story of a haunted house taking advantage of a dysfunctional family in "Burnt Offerings" (Dan Curtis, 1976) alongside Karen Black. In the often-overlooked "The Brood" (David Cronenberg, 1979), he plays the desperate husband of a woman who is increasingly under the sway of her unhinged psychiatrist. He then stars in two serpent-centric horror flicks, "Venom" (Piers Haggard, 1981) and "Spasms" (William Fruet, 1983). He even took a turn at a Poe character in "The Pit and the Pendulum" (Stuart Gordon, 1991). He plays a doctor gone mad in the mutation medical horror comedy gem "Severed Ties" (Damon Santostefano, 1992). Anyone would envy such a storied horror career!